1591
The lumbar puncture that changed my life
After a lumbar puncture caused a chronic spinal CSF leak, my life of travel and food changed overnight. (Now with a 7 year update)
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1592
A bad day at the office
While looking for something else, I came across this rather incredible photo in the Imperial War Museum collection. That's a seaplane stuck 300 feet up a 350ft tall radio mast! If that's not amazing enough, the pilot was rescued by three men who climbed up to retrieve him. And he survived.
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1594
Punk is dead and so are we
footnotes
1595
You are not late (2014)
[Translations: Italian, Japanese, Chinese] Can you imagine how awesome it would have been to be an entrepreneur in 1985 when almost any dot com name you wanted was available? All words; short ones, cool ones. All you had to do was … Continue reading →
1596
Notes on paper (2023)
Over the past few weeks, I have been scanning my notes and homework from school using the nice professional scanners at my workplace. These notes have been sitting in my closet for several years because I don't want to keep them, but didn't want to throw them out until scanning them, and I've never had access to a…
1597
Marginalia: 3 Years
It’s been three years since the inception of Marginalia Search, then a dinky experiment to find where the heck the cool Internet has gone, now my full time job. While there’s always things that can be improved, it’s fair to say the search engine has never worked as well as it does right now. A great number of…
1598
Losing two jobs in one year
and learn to accept imperfection
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Ten years of remembering every day that passes (2022)
I began this process on 17 December 2011 and let the tenth anniversary pass without comment, so the time has come to reflect. Firstly, I con...
1602
YouTube addiction, one month sober
Today marks my first month clean from YouTube . It was the right choice, but that's not to say it was easy.
1603
Reading "A Programmer's Guide to Common Lisp"
I got a cheap used copy of the book A Programmer's Guide to COMMON LISP by Deborah G. Tatar, Digital Press, 1987. Why did I read such an...
1604
The Xylophone Maze: Screen-free coding for children
My child is 3 years old. I was looking for a game that we could play together and would be her first programming-like activity. I wasn’t keen to teach her anything specifically but rather offer her the option to explore what coding or algorithmic thinking tasted like (similarly when you would give your child a sheet…
1605
Strawberry Pop-Tart Blow-Torches (1994)
In addition to the basic materials, a number of safety-related items were needed to conduct this experiment. First, a suitable location for the experiment was required, it being expected that the kitchen was not the appropriate place for blow-torching SPTs. The author's driveway was chosen as a suitable site. Second…
1606
Things I don't know about AI
The more I learn about AI markets, the less I think I know. I list questions and some thoughts.
1607
1608
The day I canceled my Spotify subscription
I used to be a big fan of Spotify. Today I cancelled my subscription.
1609
"Rabbit Test" Unwins the Hugo
I cannot convey the supreme depths to which I’d rather be doing anything else with my Saturday afternoon other than writing this blog post, but here we are. If you have been blessedly insulat…
1610
I taught the Iliad to Chinese teenagers (2021)
Several years ago I had the chance to lead two seminars with a group of high-performing Chinese high school seniors. Each seminar had between 20-35 kids; each of these students was a graduating sen…
1611
Programming book authors: put all the code in the book
tl;dr: programming book authors: put all the code in the book! An extreme antipattern for a programming book is “download the author’s idiosyncratic library code from some random URL an…
1612
Pimp Your Board Games
Board gaming is such a lovely hobby to keep your mind and your company on edge. No bright blue …
1613
So long, and thanks for all the bytes
Goodbye Tech, Hello Future
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I grew my Substack from 439 to 451 free subscribers in just 11 months
And how YOU can too!
1616
Math as a habit
Making math a daily habit
1617
My Visit to Deep Springs College (2009)
You should neither trust outward appearances, nor let them intimidate you. There is always a discord between the appearance that a person or organization projects, and their actual nature. For this reason, always be careful about the people and organizations in whom you place your trust.
1618
FOSDEM 2024: my experience, some notes and tech tips
I'm sleep-deprived, completely exhausted, but incredibly excited about the whole experience. Here are my notes, impressions and a lot of pictures about FOSDEM 2024.
1619
Notes on my Remarkable tablet
Some notes on my note taking device
1620
All my thoughts after 40 hours in the Vision Pro
Welcome to the 2030s.